TechWire: Review: Vodafone 360 (on Samsung's H1)

Vodafone has embarked on its most ambitious mobile handset project to date: a new operating system.

The system, called Vodafone 360, is hoped to rival the OS's on iPhone, Nokia and Google's Android. To kick the system off, Vodafone has launched two high-spec smartphones from Samsung.

Here, I'm looking at the high-end touchscreen H1 (which costs €100 on 18 month contracts of €35 and above, with an unlimited data package included).

Overview
The H1 360 has a 16GB hard drive (of which about 14GB is available) plus an additional micro-SD slot for extra storage. It has wi-fi, Bluetooth, a radio, a five megapixel camera and a 3.5mm earphone jack. It also has GPS, mapping software, a web browser, an email client and connects directly to a new Vodafone online application store. It uses a new operating system (based on Linux) which Vodafone hopes will become a rival to Nokia's Symbian, Apple's iPhone and Google's Android.

Design
In terms of looks, Samsung's H1 is up there with slickest, slimmest touchscreen models around. The front-facing rim feels like brushed metal, while the back is a solid heavy plastic polymer. Cleverly, Vodafone has kept its '360' logo in the same colour as the phone's shell, keeping the branding subtle. The 3.5 inch Amoled screen is about the best and sharpest on the market, displaying colours and images vividly.

Operating system
The 360 operating system is based loosely on an open source, Linux format. It's a 'new' system that Vodafone is introducing in concert with Verizon in the US and China Mobile in Asia. The idea is to go head to head with Apple, Symbian and Android in creating a platform for developers to create applications, games and programs for. The applications market is currently dominated by Apple's iPhone App Store. Operators are increasingly desperate to get a piece of this lucrative market.

Using the phone
Coming from other phones, there are a couple of things that take getting used to on the H1 360. The first is that there is no 'home screen', an entry screen that you come back to, to centre yourself after using the device for something. Instead, you can leave the phone in the application menu, the contacts menu or the 'recently called' menu.
But for Vodafone, the main idea of 360 is that you use the contacts page as your standby screen. This updates your contacts' availability status in real time. In other words, if they're on Facebook, it shows you the latest status update they posted. (For those worried about the data implications of this, Vodafone reckons that the 2GB monthly limit will be more than enough to handle this.)
The contacts screen is also the 360's design calling card. It's a flickable 3D view of all contacts and shows 'integrated information' about them. In other words, if a contact has a Facebook or Bebo account, the phone will incorporate this information -- and all the means of contacting them -- into their contact profiles. So when you click on a contact, you can choose to call them, send a text, send an email or connect on a social networking site with them. At the time of writing, only Facebook, Windows Live and Google were supported. But Vodafone says that Twitter is on the way. (For Twitter users, there is free client application available for download from the shop, called Twitta, but it is very poor.) Finally, there is an 'instant chat' option to communicate with other Vodafone 360 users.
The phone has a nice glowing base that indicates a missed call or unread text. In terms of battery life, I got two days from a single charge, with a little less using the phone for frequent web browsing.

Inputting text
For texting, writing and emailing, the phone relies on a Qwerty format, much like the iPhone. Getting used to punctuation, numbers and symbols, takes little to no time at all. The phone uses what is becoming a standard typing recognition system on high-end touchscreen phones, helpfully highlighting a letter or number to show you which one you are pressing. The phone cleverly extends this system into the web-browser. When weblinks are tiny and clustered together, it's hard to pick them out individually. So the system highlights and magnifies the two closest links to your touch and lets you choose which one, to avoid a wrong link.

Touchscreen
One of the most important practical issues with a touchscreen smartphone is how well the touchscreen itself works. The main reason that Apple pulled off its iPhone success is that its screen is so responsive. But it has to be, as a non-responsive screen negates almost all other advantages a smartphone provides. So far, no rival manufacturer -- with HTC coming close -- has rivaled the iPhone's ease of use. Sadly, the H1 is not the device to best the iPhone in this regard. Its touchscreen is pretty decent, though, and rarely hinders use of the device in any serious way.

Getting new applications
Vodafone wants to go head to head against the App Store, Ovi and Android. To do this, it must have an online applications store. So it has created one called 'Shop'. From the phone, you can browse for applications and download them directly over the air. At the time of writing, there were not too many applications available, but Vodafone is promising over 1,000 within the coming weeks. (It is also running a €50,000 competition in Ireland for the best application from an Irish developer.)

Performance and speed
The H1 has a decent -- if not exhilarating -- set of machinery under its hood. It runs on a 600Mhz TI processor, which is about the same as current high-end smartphones. To put in a faster chip would cost manufacturers (and operators) a premium. However, given their multimedia ambitions, the current generation of smartphones really need an extra speedbump: I found that the H1 slowed down considerably when performing some operations. It should be noted, however, that this was an early production model, with some bugs always likely.

Synchronisation
One of 360's other pitches is that you can upload your contacts to Vodafone.ie's 360 service, meaning that you have them available should you lose your phone. For anyone who uses Zyb.com, this will be a familiar process. There is no synchronisation yet available for Outlook, although Vodafone says that this will happen soon.

Music and photos
Music playback on the H1 is adequate. There's plenty of space (about 14GB) to hold music, while it sports a normal 3.5mm headphones jack. The five megapixel camera (with flash) is decent while the camcorder is superb -- as good as any phone tested so far this year.

Conclusion
Vodafone's 360 is an interesting, competent, operating system that is easy to get around. Features such as contacts backup are a welcome, common sense improvement to the mobile phone. Being able to access a friend's total web, email and phone contacts in one go is also very handy. At this early juncture, the main quibbles we had were sluggishness switching between applications and a lack of ability to keep multiple applications open at the same time. Vodafone also has a tough task taking on the giants of Apple, Symbian (Nokia) and Google when it comes to the adoption of its operating system.

Comments

I don't understand why Nokia would go head to head with Symbian?? They own Symbian since earlier this year, one of my mates used to work for Symbian now he's a Nokia employee working in the Symnbian offices... o.O

Posted by: c0ldfyr3_ie | November 30, 2009 at 06:22 AM